Flags of the World Puzzles

It’s week 6 of the MeMeTales Readathon. This week’s theme is Global Culture. Raising my son to appreciate and understand different people and cultures is important to me. One of my favorite ways of working towards this goals is to read books. There are four great books available to borrow this week at MeMeTales: Cora Cooks Pancit, Good Fortune in a Wrapping Cloth, Mandy and Pandy say, “Ni Hao Ma?” and Mandy and Pandy visit China. These books explore the cultures of the Philippines, Korea, and China. After reading the books, I showed my son the flags of the countries as well as flags of other countries. We recreated several flags of the world.

Make a Flag Puzzle

Look online to explore the flags of the world. I used the CIA’s World Factbook to find the flags we made. I chose flags with simple patterns so that Aiden could help paint them. Inspired by the MeMeTales books, we made China’s flag and the flag of the Philippines. We also made Japan’s flag because Aiden likes to use the circle sponge brush and the red sun on Japan’s flag was perfect for that.

To make China’s flag, I cut a piece of red cardstock. Then, Aiden placed one of his star shaped blocks into yellow paint and stamped the star onto the upper left corner of the flag. I added four little stars using a small star stencil.

To make the flag of the Phillipines, I cut a rectangle from a piece of white cardstock. I folded the rectangle in half. The left side of the flag is a white equilateral triangle. I measured the left side of the flag and drew the other two sides of the triangle the same length. I covered the top half of the flag and the triangle with paper (I used a few index cards and some painter’s tape). Then, Aiden painted the bottom half of the flag red. He opted to use his fingers to paint the red. I let the paint dry.

Later, I removed the index cards and covered up the red half of the flag and the white triangle, so we could paint the top half of the flag blue. Then, we added the sun and stars.

After three flags, Aiden was done with following my lead. He painted his own flag next.

Then, he painted himself.

I turned the flags into puzzles by cutting them into large pieces. Here’s the finished product.

7 Responses to "Flags of the World Puzzles"

This is a great idea for my 1st grader, especially since we’ve been working on identifying countries on our globe! I think it’s fun to talk about what the symbols represent, like the sun for Japan’s flag.